The history of art is full of controversies, many of which have served valuable functions for both artist and audience. The debate concerning contemporary visual art has been especially heated, however, and in the flurry of charge and countercharge it is often hard for the spectator to find the proper relation to the work under discussion. One way, I believe, of avoiding many of the misconceptions which stand in the way of an appreciation of contemporary art is to consider it within its historical framework, though one needs to proceed with caution since a number of widely accepted historical generalizations have obscured important issues. It is very misleading, for example, to think of the acme of Greek art as a necessary consequence of the “Golden Age” of Pericles. It is equally deceptive to link the flourishing of Florentine Renaissance art with the political and economic boom that Florence experienced under the Medici family. The social history of an epoch may have distinct effects on its art, but even the richest patron would not have had any substantial influence on the creative genius of the artists. Moreover, history offers enough examples of artists whose genius was not recognized by their contemporaries, and who were forced to go hungry and die in poverty. The work of such artists finds praise and general acclaim only at a considerably later date. And who, in this connection, shall decide the merit of the individual artists? Who, for example, could ever state definitely that Botticelli was a greater artist than Pontormo, or vice versa? Individuals, as well as whole generations, may judge differently. The fact which we are ultimately faced with is that art, and its historical development, has roots which go too deep to be fully explained by rational means.
In these circumstances, how is it possible to approach contemporary art as a part of history? What criteria can we apply to evaluate the works of contemporary artists with some degree of reliability and justice? Does not the sharply divided opinion of the public make objectivity impossible?
The key lies first of all in discarding such rigid and subjective terms as good/bad, beautiful/ugly, and then proceeding in the cautious and unbiased manner of the historian, always bearing in mind that an historical approach is but a useful tool adopted pragmatically, not a means of formulating ultimate answers.
A brief survey of the history of ideas, then, may help us to understand modern art. We must go back to 18th-century English philosophy and to the French and German Romantic theorists and poets. It was there that the concept of “genius” was born, the idea that exceptionally gifted individuals should be allowed every freedom so that they might become god-like creators. Poets and writers alike imagined totally subjective works of art, poems consisting of beautiful words and sounds but without coherence or meaning. But art and poetry were not ready to take up such a challenge, and it was only in the related psychological climate of the late 19th century that the French Symbolists began to realize the dreams of the Romantics. As late as 1900, painters and sculptors began to follow in the same direction and to abandon all traditions in a powerful revolution. This period saw the birth of abstraction and the beginning of the battle for “absolute” values. The full impact was felt when Matisse, in 1905, led the Fauves in breaking all the traditional rules of form and colour, and when Picasso painted “Les Demoiselles d’Avignon” in 1907, thereby denying the criterion of beauty in art that had been accepted for centuries.
What was it that unleashed and directed these momentous forces? Simply referring to historical facts does not unlock the riddle, yet art is woven into the dynamic pattern of history. Changes in styles, breaks with tradition, and startling innovations may be most fruitfully considered as symptoms of the changing emotional climate. But what does the emotional climate consist of? What are the factors that bring about such tremendous changes and how can we single out and describe those factors which lead to quite new forms of expression in art? I think Gertrude Stein, without clinging to any profound philosophy or psychology, found very simple words which are rather helpful: “People really do not change from one generation to another, as far back as we know history people are about the same as they were . . . indeed nothing changes from one generation to another except the things seen. And the things seen make the generation . . . one of seeing and being seen.”
One could say that beneath the surface stream of the historical process flows a subtler, and perhaps ultimately more significant, current of change; a gradual evolution in ways of perceiving, and hence of being. Ways of seeing, ways of feeling, ways of apprehending the subtler aspects of reality are continually changing, and though the more positivistically inclined dislike such un-empirical concepts, poets and artists have always been more attuned to the psychic atmosphere of the age. Miss Stein speaks of this phenomenon as the “composition” of an epoch, and this is more or less what we call the psychological climate. Obviously the response of the artists to the changes of such a climate is scarcely unified; in every period there is an elite of pioneers who insist upon riding the crest of the wave of the future, while their more conservative contemporaries still have an emotional commitment to the norms and ideals of the preceding period. It should be remembered, of course, that “new” is not a priori indicative of high quality, and not being avant-garde is not necessarily a flaw, as some of the more snobbish would have us believe. Furthermore, one should bear in mind that only a minority of creative artists are sensitive to the oscillations which are in the air and which cause fundamental changes in expression and in style, though a permanently significant breakthrough by the avant-garde usually draws the main body of artists in the direction it has taken, sooner or later.
The new conceptions of such revolutionary artists as Matisse and Picasso, then, are more profitably viewed as manifestations of the continually changing psychological structure of history, rather than as the frivolous indulgence of personal whim, or as an irresponsible attempt to shock the bourgeoisie. Still it is understandable that mistrust, confusion, and bewilderment are the first responses to something completely new and that at such moments the critical onlooker wonders what art really is. A definition of art is, of course, much more difficult than would appear at first glance. Consider, for example, the legal battles that have been fought over precisely this point. Twenty-five years ago one of Brancusi’s bronze birds arrived in New York. It was held up for two years by the United States Customs officials because they were unable to decide whether this sculpture was taxable as a piece of metal or could be entered duty-free as a work of art. And while the sculpture was being held in limbo for want of an adequate definition of its status, prominent artists and critics were continually assailed by the questions: Is this a work of art? What is art?
Finding an answer to these questions is extremely difficult because more than the works themselves is involved. Much depends on the beholder, and everyone’s artistic judgment is biased to some extent. We are influenced by what we have seen and learnt, our aesthetic judgement has been formed by those works of art which have been held up to us as examples of “good” or “great” art, and it is scarcely surprising that we feel a sense of shock and anger when we are unable to relate a new mode of expression to our past experience, and to the image of excellence which has been created in our minds. Unfortunately, there are many who, finding it all too strange, will take the easy way out by simply rejecting a new form of art without making any effort to understand it.
Art, however, has never been completely dependent for its development or its life on the reactions of the critics and the public. Theorists or groups of literati may formulate ideas about a new style, but in the end it is the artist, driven by his own inner impulses, who decides what the visual image will be. For example, the Classicism of the “Grand Siècle” was not the mere result of the rules of the Roman and French Academies, although there existed between the artists and the Academies a mutual exchange of principles and ideas. Guillaume Apollinaire propagated, but did not create, Cubism in the period around 1910, and it is hardly likely that Picasso would have taken another direction if he had never discussed certain problems with the poet. Similarly, it is doubtful whether Max Ernst would have developed differently as an artist had he not come under the influence of Breton’s theories of Surrealism. Even where there is an evident kinship between the figurative arts and literature, it is wiser to treat the resemblance in terms of analogy rather than in terms of influence.
As mentioned before, critics at the present time have a tendency to react sharply to contemporary art: there are, on the one hand, those who see the dawning of a brilliant new period of art, and those who see in current trends the end of art itself. Lest we succumb to a rather pervasive tendency to over-react, it is well to bear in mind that no art period has escaped critical conflict, sometimes rather genteel but often bitter and sustained. Consider, for instance, a comparison between two epochs that are currently considered major periods of artistic achievement: the medieval art of Sicily, Rome, and Venice, as represented by mosaics and mural paintings; and fresco painting as developed by Raphael in Rome in the early 16th century. Imagine one of the painters of the former period stepping somehow across the boundaries of time to confront Raphael’s fresco “Disputa” in the Vatican [Fig. i]. Perhaps if he had been graced with a fair amount of open-mindedness and aesthetic flexibility, he would grudgingly acknowledge that a certain amount of progress had taken place. It is rather likely, though, that he would turn away in shock and indignation, for everything that had been meaningful for him would have disappeared. His artistic world had been a highly stylized one, aloof and remote from the earthly and the realistic [Fig. 2]. Here, however, he is exposed to an extreme form of naturalism, to hundreds of details which he would have suppressed as contrary to his ideal of art.
As another example, consider the situation of an art lover born in the latter half of the 15th century in Florence. As a young man he would have developed his ideas on painting from the art of Botticelli [Fig. 4] and Ghirlandaio. In his sixties, however, he would have been confronted with the Florentine Mannerists, with such paintings as Pontormo’s “Christ’s Deposition from the Cross” [Fig. 3]. Certainly this must have been a bewildering experience! The effect on the onlooker must have been like viewing a theatrical performance—with figures presented in violent, dramatic postures and gestures and illuminated by an unfamiliar colour scheme reminiscent of artificial stage lighting. And what about his reaction to Michelangelo’s “Holy Family”, painted immediately after the turn of the century? Was this peasant woman in her strange distorted pose a Madonna at all? The conventional landscape background had disappeared and instead the Holy Family with St. John was placed in front of a group of nude figures whose relation to Mary and Joseph is hard to interpret. Michelangelo’s art radiated a tremendous energy which drastically changed the approach to the visual arts, and the sheer power of his genius must have perplexed many of his contemporaries. One cannot help but wonder about the feelings of the spectators who, on Christmas Day 1541, were confronted with the gigantic and strangely contorted figures of the “Last Judgment” in the Sistine Chapel [Fig. 5]. They may have thought that art could go no further on this particular path—a thought also expressed by some critics in relation to modern abstract art. In fact the rejection of the fresco started with the famous and rather brutal letter sent to Michelangelo by Pietro Aretino. The scandal ended fifteen years later with an order of the Pope to have parts of the mural repainted by a pupil of Michelangelo’s.
It is also important, I think, to bear in mind that the reputations of certain artists, now considered great leaders of their time, have fluctuated very much in the past. The appraisal of Rembrandt and Raphael, for example, has gone through a remarkable series of ups and downs. Rembrandt’s popularity had already begun to decline in his lifetime. For about fifty years after his death Rembrandt’s paintings commanded scandalously paltry sums. In the mid 18th century, however, critical judgement of his work began the ascent to its present lofty peak. The early Flemish, Dutch, and German painters, whom we admire so much, suffered a similar fate. They were not rescued from the virtual oblivion to which they had been consigned until the Romantic period. As a matter of fact, their rediscovery was not so much an aesthetic recognition as a result of the Romantics’ penchant for glorifying past epochs of Northern art and literature. Despite this reappraisal and new-found admiration, though, the brothers Boisseré, the greatest collectors of Northern art, met with very little competition in their search for masterpieces from these early periods. And when, in 1827, Bavaria’s art-loving king, Ludwig I, purchased the collection, the Prussian Government was the only other serious contender.
In presenting these examples I have tried to show some of the difficulties inherent in the evaluation of the art of one’s own period and the reasons why extreme caution must be exercised in ascribing “bloom” or “decay” to it. It is always wiser to avoid using such morphological terms in regard to periods and styles.
Of course, a simple comparison of past and present attitudes does not tell the whole story. Ancient and modern paintings are the products of utterly different demands and conditions. In Leonardo’s time, for example, all manner of details had to be considered in presenting the subject, and the completion of a painting might have required weeks, months, or even years. Leonardo had worked on the portrait of Mona Lisa for four years when he was summoned to the Court of France. He took it with him and today we are not even certain that he himself put the finishing touches to it. Nowadays, however, paintings are generally executed very quickly. Their meaning, of course, is quite different. They depict something transitory, a feeling of inner tension and sensations. We are conscious of movement, of mood, when we look at them. Indeed, one often wonders why they are put into frames. Sometimes they look like the results of some research in an institute of experimental psychology. But should we, for this reason, call them “Un-Kunst”? (In discussions on modern art, conducted in English, Bernard Berenson liked to express his view by this German slogan.) They are, after all, products of our time and no opponent of modern art can deny that it has opened our eyes to the psychological and aesthetic aspects of colour and to the artistic beauty of line and form in themselves. Our appreciation of a picture is no longer governed by the subject matter. An abstraction by Michael Larionov painted around 1911, while showing the dissolution of naturalistic forms, still suggests a landscape. Its title is “Night of May” [Fig. 7]. Yet as early as 1912 Léger stressed the way he wanted us to consider one of his paintings as purely geometric forms by giving it the title “Contraste de Forme”. In his painting “Yellow, Orange, Green”, Kasimir Malevitch emphasizes pure geometrical forms and sharp chromatic contrasts [Fig. 6]. (The black-and-white reproduction does not render the exuberance of the colours). In sculpture it was Brancusi who showed us that highly stylized forms can be admired for a beauty of their own [Fig. 8].
In this connection one might also consider the often heard complaint that non-objective art is highly intellectual. No doubt the trend of 20th-century art has something to do with intellectualism, and by no means only when the geometrical constructions of Mondrian or Nicholson are under discussion. But one may well ask: can a work of art be produced without a certain amount of rational thought, without the use of the intellect? Intellectualism was also the charge levelled at modern music and it is easy to discover the intellectual basis of twelve tone music: the whole piece is constructed on the sequence and variation of tone series. Serial music, however, is written to be heard and for the listener the tonal effect is decisive; thus the question of whether the listener has understood how the piece was constructed is of lesser importance. It might also be asked whether musical composition has ever been possible without a similar use of the intellect. Was it ever possible to write a fugue without the ordering and control of that element of mind which we label “rationality”? Can the employment of motifs or the playing with themes and variations be the result of emotions alone?
As to the visual arts, was it not Raphael who composed a group consisting of a Madonna with the Child Jesus and St. John within a triangle? Are there any large compositions executed within these last six centuries that could not, eventually, be reduced to well-balanced diagrams and perspective constructions? In short, every work of art must be controlled in some measure by the “ratio”. And it is this rational element that produces the discipline without which the work would be chaotic.
There are, of course, limits and it is possible that the intellect may become an authoritarian ruler. Similarly, too much emotion can also destroy the balance of a work of art. It will always be difficult to define these limits or to apply specific standards because the judgment of the artist as well as of the beholder will always be subjective and, at the same time, conditioned by the psychological climate of the time. Let us consider just one of the many examples supplied by history. Around 1800, the German poet Heinrich von Kleist complained that artists and poets of his period were much more inclined to follow their intellect than their imagination. This is the language of a Romantic poet. On hearing it, a contemporary Classicist would have frowned and voiced his doubts. The contrasting concepts cannot be kept completely apart and may at times even become fused. The Swiss abstract painter Max Bill might be called a leading representative of the group that has discarded the word “abstraction” and that speaks of “concrete art” [Fig. 9]. These artists refer back to the manifesto written by Theo van Doesburg, the Dutchman who rejected any relationship with natural or realistic forms. Instead, he maintained, the artist should create mathematically precise, elementary plastic constructions or colour configurations. Born from the artist’s inspiration and imagination, they possess a ‘concrete’ existence of their own.
At the beginning of this century there was a great desire for radical change, an unprecedented wish for something absolutely new. Compromise with the past was no longer considered possible. Completely new paths of self-expression had to be explored: Realism and Naturalism seemed sterile and obsolete. Gertrude Stein made it clear that even language had lost its vitality and that sweeping linguistic reforms were needed to give a new rhythmic life to prose and poetry. As early as 1906, in writing her first collection of short stories, “Three Lives”, she undertook a remarkable idiomatic revaluation in her attempt to revitalize the language. If one wished to characterize the new element in her prose, for example in the masterfully written story “Melanctha”, one could assert that there is a new movement in her language. And movement became a watchword among the artists of this period. Life is movement, movement life. This conviction led painters and sculptors to experiment boldly and to formulate the most extreme theories in their manifestos. Matisse and his followers, the Fauves, who held their first exhibition in the Salon d’Automne in Paris in 1905, led a revolution which above all stressed novel forms and new colours. There remained, however, some link with realism in their art. Italian Futurism, as propounded in the manifesto composed by Boccioni, Carrà, and others in 1910, wanted to make movement itself visible. Everything static was taboo for these artists. They were no longer interested in the formal rendering of a streetcar; they wanted to portray it travelling at full speed, they wanted to depict speed itself. Marcel Duchamp’s enthusiasm for movement found its classic expression in his famous painting of 1911—the second version in 1916—“Female Nude Descending a Staircase”. Here, there are just remnants of a stair and of a woman. The whole picture can only be understood as a symbol for movement, for quick descent. With such experiments the conventional concept of space was abandoned and, since movement is unthinkable without a certain shift in time, one may speak of a completely new conception of space and time. Boccioni himself gave one of his sculptures, a bronze figure shown in movement, the title “Unique forms of continuity in space”. Even the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, though based on premises quite different from those of the Futurists, has much to do with the same problems of space and time. Picasso’s attempts to show the human head in profile and “en face” also follow the new conception of space and time in principle.
If we consider the important part played by the concept of movement during the past fifteen years, we are almost tempted to speak of a kind of “renaissance”. Today, as fifty years ago, the obsession with movement is a dominant factor. The Futurists found in movement a way of getting closer to life itself and contemporary artists also find that life can best be expressed by movement, even by moving objects or machinery. The desire to express movement has led to serious and even brilliant new inventions such as Calder’s mobiles and the glittering space sculptures of Richard Lippold. Though his space constructions are generally static, they seem to be in continuous movement since the stainless steel and wire constructions shimmer and glow in the ever-changing light.
Movement is not the only element in contemporary art that seems like a revival of the futuristic dreams of the past. Some modern abstract constructions, for example, are very similar to works produced by the Russian Constructivists around 1910. Their completely abstract reliefs, built in metal, wood, glass, and other materials, differ little from work done today in sculpture. The works of Malevich provide another striking example. The canvases he exhibited in 1915 in Moscow would not have looked out of place in New York in the early 1960’s. One painting by Malevich that became a landmark in the history of modern art was nothing more than a square in black—reminiscent of one of Ad Reinhardt’s black squares of 1961. As early as 1950, artists began to fill a canvas with only one colour. Suffice it to mention here Barnett Newman’s
“Red Plains” (1950–51), or Clyfford Still’s “Epic in Black” (1952). They, however, enlivened their one-colour plains with chromatic nuances. Even American action painting cannot be said to have progressed much beyond Kandinsky’s early work, that is to say, beyond the huge compositions Kandinsky painted before 1920. Here one finds grandiose masses of colour painted with dramatic bravura. The powerful free play of grey and coloured “clouds” bears no resemblance to Kandinsky’s later and better known style, where lines, geometric shapes, colours, and brushstrokes are held together in a kind of mathematical equation.
It is tempting to interpret abstract and non-objective art in the light of contemporary culture and philosophy. This would, however, exceed the limits of this essay and would, moreover, cover ground already well trodden. One thinks of the many analogies in literature like the tremendous revolution started by James Joyce, and one can follow parallel phenomena in poetry from Eliot’s “The Waste Land” to the works of young poets in most countries today. As a further analogy one could mention the fact that, between 1910 and 1914, music disposed of Romanticism and traditionalism in as thorough a way as the figurative arts dispensed with representationalism. Suffice it to mention Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire”, a bold piece of music accompanying the text of an avant-garde poet, Albert Giraud (1912). Stravinsky’s “Sacre du Printemps” (1913) represents a most powerful rejection of tonality in favour of new rhythms and hitherto unheard dissonances. This work coincided with Picasso’s Cubist paintings and etchings. And while the artists and the literati discussed the “absolute” in art, Valéry spoke about “la poésie absolue”.
Moreover, we can only hint at the importance of modern depth-psychology for the contemporary arts. It was psychology itself that helped to free man almost completely from convention. One could say that the Romantics’ desire to give complete freedom to the artist became a reality at last. Mention has already been made of the philosophers of the Enlightenment and the Romantic poets who saw in the artist a kind of Homo Dei, capable of giving form to his innermost psychological reactions, relying solely on his feelings, emotions, and dreams. But the new psychology uncovered the alluring power of the unconscious and filled us all with the terrors of that underworld. No wonder that what W. H. Auden called “Our Age of Anxiety” left its mark upon the visual arts. The struggle against psychological fear has much to do with the lack of harmonious settings in contemporary art, and with the bewilderment and anguish that we find expressed in various ways in the work of many artists. This theme is clearly a symbol of modern man as he turns towards the dark mystery of the unconscious. It found its artistic expression in sombre works such as Paul Klee’s painting: “Mask of Fear” [Fig. 13].
We should not forget, however, that in modern art we are confronted with a phenomenon which has left traces throughout the history of art. Through the centuries, realism and naturalism have been defied by counter-currents, by more introspective artists. Although they never went as far as to jettison external subject matter in favour of pure abstraction, they often did distort and deform their subject matter as they probed for its deeper meaning; or if they left the subject matter substantially intact, they frequently achieved their purpose by surrounding their subjects with an atmosphere of horror, of absurdity, almost of lunacy. The 16th and 17th centuries, for instance, supply us with many such examples, and their profound relationship with modern works of art can be very striking. El Greco’s art, with its strangely elongated and distorted forms and dramatic and mystical landscapes, is a case in point [Fig. 31]. One could also mention the spectral qualities, the predilection for the grotesque and the nightmarish in the works of Bosch [Fig. 10] and in the paintings of Arcimboldi [Fig. 12] several decades later. These characteristics may be found again in the work of modern masters like Dali [Fig. 11], whose work also points back to earlier ancestors, such as Breughel the Elder.
During the first half of the 17th century, Monsù, a not too widely known Italian Mannerist [Fig. 32], painted magical, phantasmagorical landscapes which, here and there, seem to live again in the sombre and uncanny landscapes of Max Ernst [Fig. 43]. One could also think of Bracelli’s set of etchings of bizarre figures published in Florence in 1624 [Fig. 20]. It is often said that these “bizzarrerie” are the forerunners of Cubism. This is not so. These fantastic constructions are a product of the period’s interest in technology and mechanical toys as well as of its penchant for the bizarre and the grotesque. What, then, do the monstrosities of Arcimboldi, the fantastic buildings of Monsù, and Bracelli’s etchings have in common? They represent an attempt to break away from documentary realism and to give shape and form to reveries and dreams. It could also be said that logic and reason became less important than the irrational and the symbolic.
In addition to Ernst and Dali, there are other eminent nonabstract artists whose work is pervaded by a disquieting atmosphere. If we say that their work points back to Mannerism and Baroque, we are not so much interested in establishing cases of “influence”; rather, what is important is that their art is the product of a related psychological climate. The Belgian painters Delvaux and Magritte, together with the French artist Balthus, are outstanding examples of this. The paintings of Delvaux, in which every realistic detail is painstakingly recorded, achieve poignancy through their creator’s obsession with the impish and the grotesque [Fig. 16]. Magritte also uses naturalistic forms in composing his bizarre, surrealistic fantasies [Fig. 45]. Balthus, although a representational artist, is at the same time a visionary who infuses his paintings with a sinister and disquieting atmosphere [Fig. 15].
These examples should serve to remind us of how very cautious we must be in our criticism of contemporary art. We can easily deride or condemn certain elements which have, in one form or another, always existed in the visual arts.
Before concluding this brief discussion of modern art and some of its historical roots, we must make some mention of the process of dehumanization and denaturalization of the human form, perhaps the most characteristic feature of contemporary art. The idea that man is the measure of all things no longer exists, and therefore representational art, especially portraiture, had to disappear. It can hardly have been a coincidence that this happened in a world where individualism became unfashionable. There have always been introspective artists who were not satisfied with the merely realistic rendering of the human figure, but it has only been in modern times that the artist’s imagination has transformed the illusion of reality into a vision or purely abstract patterns. It is not within the bounds of this essay to speculate whether and when the human figure will again become the pivotal centre of the arts.
There is no simple answer to the question of why art, in an almost self-effacing manner, was driven to such extremes. We have, at least, considered some possible explanations. In the last resort, however, the development of history, of which art is an integral part, can only to a certain extent be explained rationally. Man is following strong and rather mysterious inner compulsions and unprecedented impulses. As Erich Neumann says: “We find various conscious motivations . . . but a large part of this will for abstraction is unconscious . . . It arises from a time trend in the collective unconscious . . . beyond our differentiated modern consciousness.” It was Neumann who, equipped with the knowledge of a modern psychologist, gave a compelling picture of the art of Henry Moore, which he characterized as the attempt to get back to archaic sources [Figs. 17, 18].
One could well write the whole history of our artistic heritage as the history of a conflict within the psyche of Western man, between an objective approach which leads the artist to the recognition of the outer, physical world, and a subjective approach, leading the artist to reject and dissolve naturalistic form. The unconscious current of which Neumann speaks oscillates continually between the subjective and objective polarities, and since the visual arts of the 20th century have been formed by their profound rapport with modern cultural life, it is within this continuous ebb and flow, this ever effective contrast between realism and anti-realism, that modern art has to take its stand. At present, of course, we have swung far towards the subjective polarity. The significance of anti-realistic art cannot be diminished, not even by the innumerable hangers-on who have been trying hard to conceal their lack of talent beneath a cloak of abstraction.
The delicate question of whether this movement has reached a crisis, or whether it is running downhill into anarchy, must remain unanswered. For good or ill, it has been a strong manifestation of the state of the human mind and, as such, has already become one more link in the perpetual chain of history.